Angela Carella: Stamford train station garage was built to fall down

Published
10:02 pm EDT, Thursday, April 16, 2015

The Stamford train station parking garage has had structural problems since its initial construction in 1984, when cracks were found in support beams just eight months after work started. X-rays of the concrete revealed that about half as many steel support rods had been used than were required. less

The Stamford train station parking garage has had structural problems since its initial construction in 1984, when cracks were found in support beams just eight months after work started. X-rays of the concrete ... more

The Stamford train station parking garage has had structural problems since its initial construction in 1984, when cracks were found in support beams just eight months after work started. X-rays of the concrete revealed that about half as many steel support rods had been used than were required. less

The Stamford train station parking garage has had structural problems since its initial construction in 1984, when cracks were found in support beams just eight months after work started. X-rays of the concrete ... more

Some time around 1980 the federal government decided that train stations in the Northeast were in dire need of renovation.

The Federal Railroad Administration was given $2 billion to undertake a rail improvement project, and Stamford's decrepit train station, built in 1906, was on the list.

The city, growing significantly at the time, was tagged for a new $50 million "transportation center," complete with an 850-space garage. The federal government supplied 70 percent of the money, the state 20 percent and the city 10 percent.

The Federal Railroad Administration chose the design and architectural contractors and the city oversaw construction.

It began in May 1983.

But that was where the good news ended.

In January 1984, eight months after work started on the first phase of the project -- the four-story garage -- the city's chief building official found cracks in three support beams. He stopped construction.

A company was brought in to X-ray the concrete beams to determine where the steel support rods had been placed. Building code requires eight steel rods for every 13 inches of concrete beam.

The X-ray company found eight steel rods for every 23 inches of beam.

It was determined that workers for the concrete contractor, O&G Industries of Torrington, failed to install the right number of rods and their foremen failed to inspect the beams before the concrete was poured.

O&G fixed the weakened beams by adding a support column that ran from the foundation of the garage to the fourth floor. A federal railroad administrator announced that there were no other problems with the garage.

Ten months later, in November 1984, the city's chief building official, citing design mistakes, stopped work on the entire train station project, which included a pedestrian bridge, two towers and the main concourse above the tracks. The flaws were severe and covered just about everything -- engineering calculations, design, fabrication of materials and construction.

In January 1985 two reviews showed that support beams, roof slabs and other elements were so overstressed that all the structures, except the garage, were in danger of collapse.

A month later, however, more cracks were found in the garage. Work on it was stopped again.

Flaws were said to be repaired and the new garage and transportation center opened in 1987, two years late and $10 million over budget.

But Stamford's train station parking woes were just beginning.

The new garage was almost instantly too small.

In 1989, two years after it opened, city officials determined that the Stamford train station was about 600 parking spaces short. Rail ridership projections were spiking.

But there would be no expansion until 2003, when the state Department of Transportation finished a 1,200-space, $24 million addition to the original garage.

In announcing that, the then-chief of the DOT's public transportation bureau, Harry Harris, said the agency planned to close the original garage, even though it was just 16 years old, far short of the 40-year lifespan one could expect for such structures.

"The whole thing's a mess," Harris told The Advocate at the time. "The engineers found cracked columns and spots where the concrete needs to be reinforced."

The DOT at first estimated that repairing the original garage would cost $200,000 but examined it further and determined it would be more like

$2 million. No repairs happened.

In 2006 the DOT determined it was too broken to fix. The concrete decks had deteriorated so badly that the steel reinforcement rods were exposed. The cost to build a new garage:

$35 million.

Amounts that large get tied up in Hartford politics. And the DOT had no idea what to do with 850 commuters who would need replacement parking while a new garage was built.

Ideas came and went. The latest is a DOT deal, as yet unsigned, with a private developer to build an office, housing, retail and hotel complex on the old garage site and move commuter parking farther away.

While all that happened the garage floors and ceilings lost more concrete. Last weekend chunks fell from the third floor straight through to the second floor, and the DOT shut down the old garage.